Before the logo: the research that makes a brand decision easy.

Start with the brand’s own history.

Before talking to customers, read the brand’s past: old logos, packaging, advertisements, price lists, even the signage on the first shop. History shows what the brand has already promised, and what people may still remember.

When we began working with Mattees Five Star, a condiments brand founded in 1996, we found that it had used three different logo identities over its thirty-year journey. That one fact shaped the whole project. Before designing anything new, we needed to know which of those identities people still recognised.

Write a one-page brand timeline before the first meeting. It will save a week of debate later.

Listen to the people closest to the sale.

Customers matter, but so do dealers, distributors, shop staff and sales teams. They hear objections every day and notice confusion long before it appears in any report.

In the Mattees conversations, customers and dealers told us the same thing in different words: the brand’s visual identity was confusing, and the latest logo was hard to read quickly on a crowded shelf. That was not an aesthetic opinion. It was a recognition problem, and recognition problems cost sales.

• Ask what people call the brand, not what the brand calls itself.
• Ask them to describe the packaging from memory.
• Ask where they first noticed it, and what made them pick it up.
• Ask what almost made them choose something else.

Turn a hunch into a question you can test.

Interviews give you direction; a survey gives you weight. The brand owners believed the original logo had the strongest recall among customers. Instead of arguing for or against that belief, we designed a survey to test it.

More than 300 people took part. Alongside logo preference, we asked for age, gender and brand awareness, so we could see whether preference changed from one group to another instead of reading a single overall number.

A good survey question can be answered in five seconds and cannot be misunderstood. If you have to explain it, rewrite it.

Read the results for decisions, not decoration.

The findings supported bringing back the essence of the original logo. But research rarely says “keep everything”. It told us what to keep, the familiar shape people recalled, and what to fix: readability and clutter.

So we redesigned the first logo instead of restoring it untouched. It became cleaner, more balanced and easier to read, with a new line, “Condiments Since 1996”, that turns thirty years of history into a reason to trust the brand.

Research the market, not only the brand.

A brand never sits alone. Walk the aisle, the mall or the street where it competes. Photograph the shelf. Note the colours every competitor uses, the claims they repeat and the gaps nobody owns.

Market research also looks ahead: trends, changing customer behaviour and new channels. The goal is not a thicker report. It is a short list of opportunities the brand can credibly claim.

• Which colours and shapes already crowd this category?
• What does every competitor promise, and what does nobody promise?
• Where are customers moving: new areas, new channels, new habits?

Keep listening after the launch.

The most useful research often happens after launch. Ask dealers whether customers recognise the new identity. Notice which campaign lines people repeat. A short follow-up survey a few months later shows whether the brand has become easier to find and remember.

Good research makes creative work braver, not safer. When everyone understands why a decision was made, the team can commit to it fully.